21 September 2010

"Architecture is going through a pretty dark period at the moment, with the troubled economy weighing heavily on the profession. But there is one surprising bright spot amid the gloom: museum design.

Even as a handful of high-profile museum expansions have been scaled back or canceled because of the recession, many more are going forward -- in cities around the world, and in diverse range of styles. Renzo Piano is opening another of his precise, restrained gallery buildings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art even as New York firm Diller, Scofidio & Renfro advances designs for Los Angeles, Berkeley and Washington D. C.

Zaha Hadid's MAXXI museum in Rome and a new branch of the Pompidou, by Shigeru Ban and the French architect Jean de Gastines, are in their first months of operation, while an outpost of the Louvre in the northern French city of Lens, designed by New York firm Imrey Culbert and Tokyo architects SANAA, is under construction. An additional Louvre branch, plus yet another Guggenheim, are planned for the United Arab Emirates state of Abu Dhabi.

As I argue in this Critic's Notebook, the most intriguing of those museum projects are interested in moving past tired arguments about how respectful the architecture is -- or isn't -- to the art on dispaly. Instead, they have something important to say about the relationship between the museum and the city."

About Imrey Culbert

Imrey Culbert was a design partnership with a focus on museum architecture and gallery design that was dissolved in 2011. Tim Culbert, design principal of the firm, has since founded his own architectural practice Atelier Culbert based in New York and Paris.
His new practice draws on a background in the arts and sustainable design to deliver stimulating and efficient projects – a paragon of collaborative practice.
Informed by the Tim's peripatetic up-bringing in Tokyo, Geneva, and Paris, the practice draws on a team of architects, designers and collaborators from all backgrounds and nationalities. With offices in New York’s Chinatown and Paris’s Marais the practice is genuinely international. This blog by Tim Culbert does not necessarily reflect the ideas of the firm's current or former work and employees under Imrey Culbert or Atelier Culbert.